Great Pan - Greek God of Nature. This God is shown as having the head of the Goat and body of a man. This shows the division in one’s self. The poet is like this - There are two identities in her. One is Indian and the other one is US citizen. Two cultures.
Pan is also the God of music. The word emigration refers to the way the culture travelled from Greece to India. Alexander the Great brought the Greek culture to India when he fought the battle of Hydaspes (326 BC) where he defeated the King Porus.
The reference to the exotic animals - snakes and monkeys show how they are part of the Indian culture. Hanuman or Anjaneya and worshipping the snake.
Literature and books came from Nature.
The personification of book and tree - rude to a book and offending the tree
Saraswathi - Goddess of Music and literature.
Memories of how we respected the book.
The second stanza has ‘Which language’ repeated twice - rhetorical question - answer is English
The poem becomes a political one with the use of some violent images.
The second stanza also talks about erasing cultures
Many violent images in the second stanza:
Murder
Torture
Cropped - Soul has been cropped - reshaped, reduce and resized
Oppressor’s tongue
Conqueror’s face
Swooped
Scythe - Pronounced as sayeth
The Unborn children they still love that strange language
One of the main themes of the poem is Language and Identity
The angry tone in the second stanza
The lines are free and open structure
Emphasis is on the message rather than the rhyme
English Rule and how it affected India’s growth
The way culture evolved
Language is identity
Language is thought
Many languages are dying
Extended Activity - Listen to the poem and practice the pronunciation
Try to imitate the style of the poet’s language
Trace the influence of the American accent in her language
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